Screen resolution setting changes after logoff

Question

Screen resolution setting changes after logoff

I can't be the only person experiencing this, but I can't find anything on the 'net about it.

I've got a 15" MacBook Pro (early 2011) and Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

About 1/3rd of the time when I logoff and go back to the Snow Leopard login window, the purple Aurora background is smaller than the screen's displayable area, and pushed up into the top left corner of the screen. A wide band of solid blue takes up the right side of the screen and a narrrower one appears along the bottom of the screen.

The login window still works, and if I log into a user, the user's desktop is also limited to that upper left part of the screen -- a roughly 9" x 7" area, instead of the 13" x 8" displayable area of the whole screen. The mouse pointer won't leave the (now limited) desktop area.

Ahhh -- I've just figured out that the display resolution shown in System Preferences-->Displays has been changed from the normal/default setting of 1440 x 900 to a settting of 1024 x 768!

It happens when logging out of any of (at least) four different users, including two that are rarely used.

Restarting the system sets everything back to normal again, as does using System Preferences to set the display resolution back to 1440 x 900.

Any idea what could be causing the screen display resolution to change after logout? Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 9, 2012 9:24 AM

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Answer 1

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 9, 2012 12:12 PM in response to Brian from VA

Just guessing here, but when you set the resolution did you do it from a standard account or a admin account? If you used a standard account then try doing it from an admin account.

I am really not sure, however, why it would loose the resolution upon logout. Another thing to try is a smc and pram reset although I don't recall if that would affect resolution.

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Answer 2

Apr 11, 2012 1:17 PM in response to X423424X

Thanks, X -- I tried ensuring that the resolution was set properly from my admin account (which is was), but it didn't affect the problem.

Since I finally figured out to search using the term "resolution" I've found a number of other threads with similar problems, although for most people two Display preference panes show up (as if the macbook has detected an external monitor) and for me it doesn't. I haven't found any fix, though.

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Answer 3

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 11, 2012 1:36 PM in response to Brian from VA

Did you try the smc and pram reset?

Since I finally figured out to search using the term "resolution" I've found a number of other threads with similar problems, although for most people two Display preference panes show up (as if the macbook has detected an external monitor) and for me it doesn't. I haven't found any fix, though.

I didn't notice in your original post saying you were using two displays. At any rate, yes, if there is two or more displays there should be two sets of preferences in the Displays preferences and there should also be an Arrangement tab. If there is no Arrangement tab then the system is not detecting the second display.

There are two plists where I think some of the resolution info is recorded:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.XXXXX.plist

The first one is of course global while the second one is in your user account (X's are a sequence of hyphanated letters and numbers).

Since you have a problem when you log out, as an experiment you could try temporarily moving the global plist to cause a fresh one to be recreated (I hope). See if the problem goes away with a fresh version of that plist.

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Answer 4

dom_beta

Level 1

0 points

Apr 24, 2012 1:05 PM in response to Brian from VA

Hello,

I am experiencing the same after installing the Thunderbolt Software Update Version 1.0.

Did you contacted AppleCare? I think this is important.

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Answer 5

Apr 24, 2012 4:01 PM in response to dom_beta

dom_beta: I think I installed that update, but I'm not sure and don't know how to check. I didn't contact AppleCare. Since I discovered a workaround, it's not important enough to me to concact AppleCare, although I could. My workaround is to go to System_Preferences->Displays and reset the resolution to what it should be (1440 x 900 for my machine). This is annoying, but I'll probably not spend too much more time on it, hoping Apple will fix it in the future.

X423424X: I appreciate your help but I didn't do the smc and pram reset because I don't think they will address this problem. Sorry in that I was probably unclear in my posts regarding monitors. Just to be clear, I have never used an external monitor with this MacBook Pro. What I meant to say was that although MY computer does not show two Display preference panes, the other threads I found that sound similar to my problem DO describe MacBooks with NO external monitors displaying two Display preference panes. Other than that, their problems seemed the same as mine.

I found out from one of those threads that if I start the Apple Chess program, leave it open, and then pick Apple_Menu->Logoff, I could reliably reproduce my originally described problem. Furthermore, when I logged in again and went to System Preferences->Displays, it showed TWO display preference panes. Yikes! I rebooted and got back to my "normal" problem state with only one pref. pane. Now I'm happy that I have just one Display pref. pane and I can just change the Display resolution as a workaround solution.

Hope that makes some sense.

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Answer 6

dom_beta

Level 1

0 points

Apr 24, 2012 10:24 PM in response to Brian from VA

Brian from VA wrote:

dom_beta: I think I installed that update, but I'm not sure and don't know how to check. I didn't contact AppleCare. Since I discovered a workaround, it's not important enough to me to concact AppleCare, although I could. My workaround is to go to System_Preferences->Displays and reset the resolution to what it should be (1440 x 900 for my machine). This is annoying, but I'll probably not spend too much more time on it, hoping Apple will fix it in the future.

If you want to have a fix for it, it's necessary that you call AppleCare, because I have a case with AppleCare and I heard that the engineers never heard of this issue.

So, if we want an update you need to contact them. That would be great.

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Answer 7

dom_beta

Level 1

0 points

Apr 25, 2012 12:59 PM in response to Brian from VA

Brian from VA wrote:

dom_beta: I think I installed that update, but I'm not sure and don't know how to check.

Open System Preferences

Software Update

and then Installed Updates

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